TUESDAYS TESTS—EEs ANSWERS Records That Reflect Neighborhoods: Were doing biographical research on someone who lived, say, 100 years ago. What kind of records give us clues to the identity of others in his or her community? Our pre-planned answer for this question listed our Top 6 favorites: 1. Censuses 2. Cemeteries 3. Church registers and minutes 4. City directories 5. Road order books 6. Voter registration rolls Four of the six have already been suggested today. Can we persuade you to consider the other two? Cemeteries: These are neighborhoods-in-microcosm—especially in rural regions. But even with urban cemeteries we should always consider the people buried around our person-of-interest. As likely as not, the adjacent plots will carry names that mean nothing to us, but we can and should use their identifications in the same way that we would use data on census neighbors. Road orders: Hmhh. Where do we start with this one? Ah, yes! We can start with the value of road orders for identifying elusive females who would never have been assigned to a road crew anyway! Yes, you read that right. Remember EEs QuickLesson 11? The key to solving our Who Was Mary Smith Conundrum came from reading county-level road order books, page by page, to recreate a neighborhood around her. If youre puzzled as to how that works, Ill repost this link (whose image is probably quite familiar to regular readers of our daily FB tips).
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 01:19:12 +0000
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